


over hill, over dale, over valley and vale

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Chelsea is fucked up y'all!, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, Hot Chocolate, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Ashes of Honor, am I the ONLY person with content in the Chelsea & Etienne tag, let her dad give her a hug!, what are you people DOING
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 15:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18195797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: There's a lot to be said for living in Fairyland, in Chelsea's opinion.  There are nights when she feels almost dizzy with an embarrassment of riches.Then there are days like this one, where Chelsea wishes Fairyland had left her well alone until the day she died a happily ignorant human death.Chelsea is less than okay, after she's freed from Riordan's clutches.  Etienne is new to this parenting lark, but be damned if he's not going to try his best.





	over hill, over dale, over valley and vale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sroloc_Elbisivni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sroloc_Elbisivni/gifts).



> I cannot BELIEVE I am the only person posting fic about these two. WHAT is this fandom doing.
> 
> Anyway, I have a fever, so I'm impulse-posting fic. Y'all have a lovely night now.

There’s a lot to be said for living in Fairyland, in Chelsea’s opinion.  Duke Torquill is very nice—partly, she suspects, because he views all of Sir Daye’s strays as a sort of motley crew of grandchildren—even if his wife is strange and distant even in her kindness.  Pixies are a vastly more interesting pest than mice, the Hobs in the kitchen are all too game to allow or even _encourage_ Chelsea to steal snacks whenever she’s interested, and for the first time in her life, Chelsea has friends near her own age.  Quentin, and through Quentin Raj, and Karen, and sometimes even Cassandra or Helen.  Not many friends, and spread across seven or eight years in age, but there are nights when Chelsea feels almost dizzy with the embarrassment of riches.

Then there are days like this one, where Chelsea wishes Fairyland had left her well alone until the day she died a happily ignorant human death.

_Chelsea sucked in a breath and it tasted like fire, and it tasted like smoke, and it tasted like_ screaming _, and then—yes, God, yes, thank you, a door out of this hell, she knew where it would take her, it would take her to Seattle—_

_She stumbled into ice and snow, and there was a voice shouting for her to listen, for her to breathe, just for a moment, and then—_

_The stars overhead were unfamiliar, and there was an invisible fist around her spine, around her heart, holding her in place, and her skin was being sanded away to reveal something new and strange, and there was still so much screaming—anything to be out of this place where everything hurt and she was a prisoner, anything, anywhere would be better, anywhere but—_

_There was a man with green eyes and a startled expression, and then there was_ fire _, and then—_

Chelsea’s eyes snap open, and she flinches back so hard her head cracks into the stone wall.  Her hands fly out, trying to ward off the flames, grabbing for the intangible _something_ that makes up the world, but—

Hands lowering slowly, Chelsea blinks, gulping in a vast breath, then another, and another, as she feels her heart race.  Right.  Of course.  She’s at Shadowed Hills, the dim shapes around her focusing into her room as her eyes remember what seeing feels like.  There are her books, and her desk, and her wardrobe.

There’s no glittering door in front of her.

It’s a good thing.  It’s safety.  It’s the surest sign in the world she’ll never be swept away again.

It makes Chelsea’s gut twist up with fear until she’s sure she’s about to be sick.

Chelsea pulls her legs up to her chest and wraps both arms tight around them, like a little kid afraid of the dark.  Chelsea had never been afraid of the dark—even as a child, she had been able to see through the dim, light-polluted Berkley night with ease, and it had felt safe and comforting, nothing like the punishing whipcrack of sunrise.  She thinks she might be learning to be afraid now, despite her fine new night vision.

At very least, her time in Duchess Riordan’s care taught her well and truly to be afraid of being alone.

“I want my dad,” she whispers into her knees.

It’s a strange impulse.  Her dad—Etienne—is still nearly a stranger.  She doesn’t know him, not really.  He’s a _knight_ , for God’s sake, he fights with a _sword_.  But—

But she also knows him better than she’s ever known anyone, because the first time she met him, he caught her shaking shoulders in his hands and said that he would never leave her again, and she had looked into his eyes and _known_ he was telling the truth.

It went like this.

Chelsea was sure she was going to die, alone in a strange world, surrounded by people who didn’t even care enough to hate her.  She wonders, now, if Sir Daye—Toby, which Chelsea is still adjusting to—knows how utterly fortunate she is, that most of her enemies _hate_ her with every fiber of her being.  It was terrifying, gut-wrenching, to know that she was going to die, her body left on the heather or thrown over the cliffs, and no one who cared would ever know, and no one who knew would ever care, except that their crowbar to pry open the walls of the world had finally given out.

And worse than that, she was going to die in _pain_ , because the blinding pain that had started in her head was lancing down her neck, burning along her nerves like it was trying to chew through her bones.  The longer she held open the gate, the more it hurt—and she couldn’t do anything else, she _couldn’t_ , because there was an unbreakable grip around her spine and she couldn’t run, couldn’t fight, couldn’t do anything but try to stand here and _not die._

When the fight started, she could barely see past the white-static haze drifting over her vision, popping here and there with black starbursts.  There was screaming, barely distinguishable from the noise in Chelsea’s ears.  It had started as a pitchy hum, then a ringing, and now it was as if she was standing in a high wind, just an endless roaring that ebbed every once in a while to remind her that her heart really was beating that fast.

Someone was rushing toward her.  Fine.  Chelsea couldn’t see, couldn’t move, just gasped out a wheezing, sobbing breath and tried to straighten under the weight of the pain.  The gate, the gate, she had to hold up the gate—

“Chelsea!”

That was what had finally gotten her attention, brought her back into her body from the elsewhere she had started to drift toward.  If Riordan knew her name, Chelsea had never seen any evidence of that fact.  The only people who had shouted her name were the other changeling, and the man with her, and this was neither of them.

Turning her head hurt more than anything else Chelsea had ever done.

There was a man moving toward her, moving fast, and he looked like he’d been beaten to hell and back but he bulled through one of the invisible soldiers without so much as a pause.

“Chelsea!” he repeated, more sharply, and then he was in front of her.  He was tall, and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and sharply pointed ears and eyes as bright as freshly minted pennies.  “Chelsea, breathe,” he said.  There was a strange accent clinging to his deep voice, but his words were kind, and he caught her shoulder when she wavered on her feet.

“Who—are—you,” Chelsea forced out, one word at a time, and his face twisted into something between grief and blind, homicidal rage.

“My name is Etienne,” he said, and oh, then his hands were brushing her hair out of her face, careful and unsure, but the touch left a small path of painlessness, for a brief moment.  “I’m—I’m your father.”

“It hurts,” Chelsea gasped, feeling tears gather in her eyes again.  The rage settled more fully onto his face.  “It—It hurts.”

“I know it does, Chelsea,” the man—her _father_ —said.  “I’m going to help you hold open the gate.  Just look at me.  You’re doing wonderfully.”

“I don’t want to keep it open anymore,” she said, tipping over fully into crying.  “It hurts, I—I don’t want to die, I don’t--”

“You are _not_ going to die,” her father said fiercely, cupping her face in his hands and catching her eyes with his own.  Her eyes, his eyes.  It was funny, to a hysterical part of Chelsea’s brain, but laughing was one too many things to consider doing right now.  “I am going to get you out of this, Chelsea.  You have my word.”

“Please don’t leave me,” Chelsea begged, and she knew she was begging, and she didn’t care, because _fuck_ , at least if he stayed, she wouldn’t die alone.  “Please, please, I can’t—I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can.”  Her father was still cradling her face in both hands, and he looked every inch the knight of the Fair Folk, even through the bruises and blood—wild, and terrible, and honest.  “Chelsea, you can do this.  I am going to get you out of this, but we need that gate back to the mortal world to do it.  Chelsea—Chelsea, look at me, open your eyes.”

Were they closed?  Chelsea forced them open, and it took far too long for his face to resolve.  All she could see was his eyes, bright as copper, and vicious with determination.

“Listen to me, Chelsea,” he said, wiping the tears from her face with his thumbs.  “I am so sorry, that I wasn’t there for you.  We should have had all these years together, and we didn’t, and I’m sorry.  But I give you my _word_ , on oak and ash and thorn and rowan and anything else you want me to swear on, that I am not leaving you now.  Do you believe me?”

And God save her—oak and ash and thorn and rowan save her—she did.

“Yes,” she whispered.  Her voice sounded like a child’s when she spoke again.  “Daddy?  What do I do?”

“You breathe,” he said, sounding close to tears himself.  “And you look at me.”

And he had somehow, through some miracle of magic she didn’t think even Etienne could explain, talked her through keeping the gate open, even when her legs tried to fold up under her and she stopped being able to speak through the pain.  He had held her up, keeping his voice steady, and she had clung to him as best she could without losing her grasp on the gate, and then when she had been snatched away again—

She knows now what it had cost Etienne to follow her, to chase her through cities and countries and realms when, at his strongest, he found it tiring to go from Shadowed Hills to Toby’s house.  The magic burn had been brutal, power dampeners or not.  But he had stayed on her heels every step of the way, he had stayed on his feet when she was collapsing, he had held her hand when they were close enough and hugged her close in the Snow Kingdoms and told her where they were.  Within an hour, he had gone from a stranger to her _dad_ , the man who would do anything in the world to keep her safe.

So maybe it makes sense, now, that Chelsea wants him.

Her mom—her mom is wonderful.  Bridget Ames loves her daughter with everything she has and more than a few things she doesn’t, and Chelsea knows this.

Her mom also didn’t understand why her beautiful baby girl screamed and sobbed every day at dawn, and even if she knows the reason now, she’ll never _understand_.  Her mom would do anything for her, but she could never have hung onto Chelsea’s hand and panted out “Welcome to Tir-na-Nog,” just so that Chelsea wouldn’t be lost anymore.

But she’s seventeen damn years old, going on eternity, and she’s going to take some deep breaths and get herself under control rather than running to her parents.

The shaking has started to ease out of her hands, finally, when her door opens—just a crack.

If it was at home—if Chelsea was how she was, at her old home—she wouldn’t have been able to make out the face of the person standing there in this darkness.  The Summerlands might be comparable to light-polluted California in their perpetual twilight, but any room meant for sleeping is _dark_ , heavy curtains or else no windows at all, and Chelsea’s is the same.  Now, though, she blinks away the last haze clinging to her lashes and whispers, “Daddy?”

“I—I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says, like he’s been caught doing something wrong.  “I only—Chelsea, are you all right?”

And she doesn’t know what gave her away, if he can see the salt tracks on her cheeks or hear the faint rasp in her voice, or maybe he just _knows_ , but it’s the middle of the day and she can’t lie to him.

“Can I have a hug?” Chelsea breathes, and she knows she sounds like a child afraid of the dark and doesn’t care.

Chelsea doesn’t care because there’s a beat where Etienne seems taken off-guard, but then he says, “Of course.”  And he crosses the room in a handful of quick steps to hesitate, just for a fraction of a second, next to her bed before he visibly steels himself and settles down next to her to pull her into a hug, and he’s nervous and unsure of his welcome, just like he was when he brushed her hair from her face, but his arms are strong and he holds onto her like she’s the most precious thing he’s ever touched.  Chelsea presses her face into his shoulder without thinking twice, wrapping her arms around his neck and breathing in the faint scent of cedar that clings to him even though he hasn’t had his magic in weeks, and her father’s grip goes from cautious to firm the moment he’s sure of what she wants, and it’s—

Chelsea finds herself bursting into tears again without really knowing why.

Etienne makes a faint noise, like he’s at a loss for what to do, but he’s a damn _knight_ , her father, and he knows how to rally and come through when he’s needed.  He comforts differently from her mother—doesn’t rub her back or rock back and forth, just holds her tight with one arm and strokes her hair with the other hand, tucking her head under his jaw while she burrows into his shoulder.  He doesn’t say anything, either, and somehow it’s perfect. 

She’s heard stories of the Fair Folk all her life, but none of them ever mentioned how brutally _hard_ Faerie took change.  She’s always been fae enough for that. 

She doesn’t know how to explain why she’s crying, can’t put her fingers on the words to say why she’s shaking apart half-way into her father’s lap, it’s all too much and too strange and some deep part of her that’s woken up lately clings pettily to the way things used to be and mutters that change is for _mortals_.  And her father, Etienne who kept Shadowed Hills standing when the Duke went mad with _change_ , doesn’t ask her to explain, just holds her and strokes her hair and waits for her to cry herself out.

It takes a while.  When Chelsea’s tears finally ebb until she’s not shuddering anymore, she realizes that he’s humming, something sweet and a little sad in the back of his throat.  Not a lullaby, but maybe a ballad.  And she keeps her head pressed against his shoulder, tucks her face into the curve of his throat, and lets the sound of it resonate into her bones while she breathes through the last of the tears.

“Sorry,” Chelsea whispers into her father’s shoulder.

“It’s quite all right,” Etienne says, loosening his grip on her slightly to let her sit away from him.  Then he cups her face in his hands, like he did in Annwn, and wipes away her tears with his thumbs, looking into her eyes with a worried expression.  In the dim light spilling in through the hallway, his eyes are too shadowed to show the bright penny-copper, but he can probably see it in hers.  “Are you well, Chelsea?  Did you have a nightmare?”

Chelsea nods, and self-consciousness is starting to set in, at last, because this might be her father, her Daddy, but he was also a perfect stranger two months ago.  Two months ago, he’d probably never let a teenager sob all over him in his life. 

“I didn’t mean to—sorry,” she says again, weakly, reaching up between Etienne’s hands to rub at her eyes.  He lets go of her at once, to give her the space to collect herself, and Chelsea wishes idly that she wasn’t such a blotchy crier.  Her mother cries with the collected elegance of a princess.  Chelsea’s face flushes red in patches and her eyes go bloodshot and she always manages to look hopelessly frazzled.  Being a pureblood just means it doesn’t last as long as it used to.

Etienne’s frown deepens, minutely.  “Don’t be.  What was your nightmare about?”

“Fire,” Chelsea says, and her voice wavers.  She clears her throat and says again, more steadily, “Fire.  And some other places.”

Etienne reaches out, hesitant, and tucks a wayward lock of hair back from her face, and says, “Do you want something hot to drink?”

The question is so— _not_ what Chelsea expected that she blinks at him for a moment.  “Something hot to drink?” she echoes, blank.

He smiles faintly.  “Yes.  I used to drink tea when I had nightmares as a child.  Do you want something hot to drink?”  She blinks at him one or two more times for good measure, against the gritty feeling of having cried too hard for too long, and Etienne adds, “I’m sure that someone is awake in the kitchen, and if not, I know where everything is.  You like hot chocolate.”

He says the last somewhere between a question and a statement.  Like he knows it’s the truth but isn’t sure he’s _allowed_ to know it.

“I—look like a mess,” Chelsea says.  “I always look like a mess after I cry.”

Etienne’s smile widens a little, taking on some of that wondering edge she’s getting used to seeing on him.  “You get that from me, I’m afraid.”

“You are _not_ an ugly crier.”

“You would lose that bet, my love,” he says dryly, and stands up from her bed.  Then he holds out a hand to her, and—

Her father’s hand is warm and Chelsea feels like a kid, standing up next to him.  They’re almost of a height—Chelsea is probably due a few more inches, which will put them dead even—but she’s in pajama pants with little frogs on them and he’s still wearing livery, fine fae cloth that looks expensive even after she wept all over it.  The stone is cold on her feet before she steps into her slippers.  It’s a strange, out-of-place sense memory, of being a little girl holding her mother’s hand after a bad dream, but it’s familiar and safe and soothing.

Etienne has callouses on his palm that can’t be from anything but a sword, but the strong, sure grip on her hand as he leads her down the hall hits that same sense memory.  Chelsea relaxes into it, more easily than she would have dreamed, into this feeling of being a kid shuffling after her parent and trying not to yawn every time she’s faced with a bright light.  Few people are awake at this hour, and those that are mostly consist of Etienne’s knights, who smile at her a little indulgently and give him a polite nod, and then they’re at the kitchen, and Etienne is placing Chelsea on a stool while he boils water in a saucepan.

He doesn’t talk while he does it, and Chelsea doesn’t ask any questions.  She’s too busy watching the apparently intricate process of making hot chocolate on a stove.  It makes some intuitive sense, she guesses.  Etienne’s exact age is something she’ll have to ask about someday, but he probably predates Swiss Miss hot cocoa packets and _definitely_ predates the microwave.  He can use one—Chelsea saw him with her own eyes, at Tamed Lightning—but apparently for the time being he prefers to melt chocolate into milk the old-fashioned way.  There’s a lot more stirring and careful heat management than Chelsea is used to, when it comes to making anything short of a meal.

God, can Etienne cook?  He seems reasonably confident, adding a bit of cinnamon and something else that smells strange and exotic to the chocolate, but Chelsea has literally never seen him make anything more complicated than coffee.  The Hobs that usually populate the kitchen are happy to feed anyone who comes through, but, as a rule, aren’t charitable to strangers cooking in their space.  Etienne is lucky there aren’t any here, or they definitely would have chased him off before he could even turn on the stove.

Chelsea is so absorbed in watching the hypnotic swirl of the hot chocolate that it startles her, when Etienne lifts the saucepan away and neatly pours some into a mug.

“It’s been a while since I made hot chocolate,” he says, with that trace of rueful humor Chelsea has started to recognize.  He sets the blue mug on the table in front of her stool and it smells sweetly of chocolate and spices, cinnamon and that other darker spice she can’t quite put her finger on.  The porcelain isn’t quite hot enough to burn when she wraps her hands around it.  “But the principle is still simple enough.”

“Just like riding a bike,” she says, staring at the hot chocolate like she’s expecting it to disappear.  Etienne makes a noise that she’s starting to know as his _I understood that human idiom but you’ll never make me admit it_ noise, and she smiles down at her mug.  “Daddy,” she says.  “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Etienne says quietly.

Chelsea takes a sip of the hot chocolate and it’s—fucking incredible, actually.  Chelsea’s always had a sweet tooth, the kind of kid who stole sugar packets when her mother’s back was turned, and the hot chocolate is so thick and sweet that it washes away the sour taste of tears with a single swallow.  When she lowers the cup, she realizes that Etienne has the remainder of the hot chocolate in a smaller mug, his hip propped against the counter next to her, not quite selling _casual_ but very nearly hitting the mark on _comfortable_.

“You were there in my dream,” she says, before she can talk herself out of it.  Etienne looks up at her, over the edge of his cup.  “I fell through the Snow Kingdoms, and I could hear your voice.  You were telling me to breathe, and that it would be okay.”

It seems to take Etienne so off-guard that he’s left fumbling for words.  In the warm golden light of the kitchen, his eyes are so bright they look polished, and when he blinks quickly, twice, something glitters for a moment on his lashes before he rallies, taking another sip of his hot chocolate as if to fortify himself.

“Chelsea,” he says, voice still quiet, as if they’re still in her room.  “I—I hope you know that I did not mean to leave you, as a baby.  I would have given anything, to be able to spend those years with you, and your mother.  You are—you are the greatest gift I could ever have dreamed of, and now that I have the option, I intend to do everything in my power to be at your side for as long as you want me there.  For the rest of your life, if you wish.”

“For the rest of forever?” Chelsea asks, and her voice sounds thin and wistful.  Forever might be her birthright, now, as a pureblood, but it’s a long time to the girl who grew up half human. 

“Until the last oak and ash crumble, and the rowan and thorn never grow again,” Etienne swears, and he sounds so serious that she thinks it must be a vow.  Chelsea nods, and takes a few more long swallows of her hot chocolate.

“This is really good, Daddy,” she murmurs.  “What did you put in it?”

“Cloves,” Etienne says immediately.  “I’m afraid my culinary talents are—limited, but no one ever accused me of being inept with spices.  I could--”  He pauses, and then bulls on like a good knight.  “I could teach you how to make it someday, if you’d like.”

“Yeah,” Chelsea says.  “Yeah, I’d love that.”

**Author's Note:**

> [I've got a Tumblr,](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/) which is where this was originally posted, and I should be asleep. Peace out.


End file.
